Mays says she has had to “gut her kitchen and bathroom down to the studs” in recent years because lead-contaminated water has corroded her pipes. “So they’ve told the world that the Flint water crisis is over, but living in it is a totally different situation.” “It feels like they’re tired of talking about it and funding it,” she said of state and federal leaders. The community, she says, has had to fill the gaps left by the government. Melissa Mays, a Flint community organizer and mother of three, has been a part of a team that has spent a little over a year knocking on more than 2,000 homes throughout the city to warn residents that their lead service lines have not been replaced. Since the Flint water crisis was discovered, Michigan officials and the federal government have spent nearly $500 million to replace lead pipes, but the process has failed to reach many homes in the city of 95,000. The agency is actively considering the report’s recommendations, an EPA spokesperson said. It also recommended a new documenting system for states’ Safe Drinking Water Act trainings. To address the issues outlined in the audit, the inspector general recommended enhancements to the department’s “Report a Violation” system to assess and track citizen tips. In response to the watchdog report, the EPA told Capital B News that it “appreciates the work” of the inspector general’s office and is “committed to using every tool available to protect all Americans from lead in drinking water.” Email Address SubmitĪt the time of Obama’s visit, the city was two years into a crisis that has led to more than 100 deaths from lead poisoning, researchers have concluded. Sign up for our newsletter and get more news and analysis from our reporters weekly. “Flint water at this point is drinkable.” “This is not a stunt,” Obama said as he sipped a glass of allegedly filtered tap water in Flint. The report comes nearly six years after President Barack Obama’s landmark 2016 visit to the city. The report also found that the department has not addressed issues in its system that allows residents to report water quality violations. While the agency improved its oversight of lead testing in states that regularly monitor their water systems, it didn’t create a uniform system to ensure all states are properly monitoring for lead contamination, the inspector general audit determined. “Without complete oversight of the drinking water program, the public’s health is still at risk from lead in drinking water,” the EPA’s Office of Inspector General wrote in the audit report released this month. Eight years later, roughly 2,000 homes in the majority-Black city still don’t have clean drinking water.Ī recent internal audit by the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s watchdog found that the government agency, which is tasked with containing toxic contamination and pollution, hasn’t fully addressed Flint’s lead crisis or done enough to prevent future disasters. The United States’ simmering water crisis boiled over in Flint, Michigan, in 2014.
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